• Moves to new Laboratories at Granta Park, Cambridge
• Appoints Dr Andrew Southan as Head of Commercial Operations
Cambridge, UK, 17 October 2016: Metrion Biosciences (Metrion), the specialist ion channel CRO, today announced it has moved into new, larger laboratories at Granta Park, Cambridge, and appointed Dr Andrew Southan as Head of Commercial Operations.
Metrion’s move to larger premises in the Riverside Development, Granta Park, from the Babraham Research Campus has been driven by the continued expansion of its CRO and collaborative drug discovery business. Granta Park is Cambridge’s largest research park and houses a cluster of international life science companies, including Gilead, Illumina, Lonza, MedImmune, Pfizer, PPD, UCB Celltech and Vernalis.
Metrion’s new laboratories provide space for additional scientific and commercial staff, sophisticated laboratory equipment and dedicated cell culture facilities. The Company has grown rapidly since its formation in 2015 and is seeing an increasing demand from major pharmaceutical and bioscience companies for its specialist cardiotoxicity and neurological safety assays and ion channel drug discovery research expertise.
As part of its growth strategy Metrion has recruited Dr Andrew Southan and three additional senior scientists. Dr Southan joins from Charles River Laboratories where he was Director of Ion Channel Biology. He has over 25 years’ experience within the life science industry, including 14 years managing services in the CRO sector at CeNeS Pharmaceuticals, BioFocus and Charles River.
Although ion channel research is his primary area of expertise, Dr Southan also brings significant experience of securing and managing discovery research across a wide range of therapeutically relevant target classes. He has taken a leadership role in stand-alone projects, multi-year collaborations and fully integrated research projects involving biology, chemistry and ADME services. His past clients span large pharmaceutical, mid-tier pharmaceutical, small biotech and virtual companies, with the collaborations often crossing multiple countries and involving management of multidisciplinary teams working with a range of assay platforms.
Dr Marc Rogers, Chief Scientific Officer, Metrion Biosciences, said: “Since becoming an independent CRO in 2015 Metrion has grown rapidly. We are delighted to welcome Andrew as Head of Commercial Operations as we move into larger and better equipped laboratories. His excellent project management skills, business development credentials and scientific expertise are ideally suited for the new role and we look forward to working with him on our team.”
Dr Andrew Southan commented: “The Metrion Biosciences team’s ion channel expertise, quality of work, dedication to customers and highly competitive pricing structure offers a great opportunity to build for success and I look forward to contributing to the Company’s further development.”
